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Galileo Galilei

1564 - 1642 AD

13 Galileo

GALILEI

Galileo Galilei, the Italian scientist, was one of the developers of the scientific method more than any other individual. He was born in the year 1564 in the city of Pisa in Italy. He studied in his youth at the University of Pisa, but he left it for financial reasons, and with the year 1589 he was able to obtain a professorship at that university. . A few years later, he joined the faculty of the University of Padua and remained there until 1610, and it was during that period that most of his scientific discoveries took place.

His first scientific contributions were in mechanics, as Aristotle Thales knew that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones. Generations of scientists accepted this principle at the disposal of Aristotle, but Galileo decided to test the validity of this principle, and after a series. From experiments he discovered that Aristotle was wrong. The fact was that heavy and light objects fall at the same speed, except for the cases in which the objects collide with the friction of the air. (And there is a story that says that Galileo accomplished the experiments by dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This story seems to be unfounded.) And there is another feat of Galileo, which is his discovery of the law (inertia). Another force is trying to keep it in motion, but Galileo's experiments proved that this opinion and popular belief was wrong, since if we exclude the hindering effects such as friction, for example, the moving body continues its movement to infinity. This important principle that Newton explained and clarified again and put it as the first law of motion is one of the vital physical principles.

Galileo's most famous discoveries were in the field of astronomy, and astronomical theories in the early seventeenth century were in a state of eruption, so there was a fierce debate between following the theory that says that the sun is the center of the universe, which is the Copernicus theory, and following the theory that says that the earth is the center, and Galileo declared in In 1604, Copernicus was right, but he did not have at that time any way to prove the solar theory, i.e. that the sun is the center. And in the year 1609, Galileo heard about the invention of the astronomical telescope in the Netherlands, and although Galileo knew only a simple description that does not cure the grief of this invention, his genius made him create an astronomical telescope that is larger and better than the telescope made in Holland. With this new instrument, Galileo directed his talents to the observation of the heavens. Within one year he made a whole series of discoveries.

He looked at the moon and saw that it was not a smooth ball, but it had volcanic craters and high mountains. The celestial bodies, as Galileo concluded, were not smooth or perfect, but had the same twists as those on earth. He looked at the galaxy and found that it was not a nebulous body, but it was composed of a huge number of stars that were so far away that even the naked eye noticed them as if they were blurred. He also noticed that there are rings surrounding the planet Saturn and noted the presence of spots on the surface of the sun.

Galileo spent six years writing his most famous work, which is (Dialogue on the Two Major World Systems). And after receiving responses and trials by the Inquisition courts, he was sentenced to denounce before the public his point of view, which is that the earth revolves around the sun. In the city of Arctiri, he continued to write about mechanics, and died in 1642.

Galileo is considered primarily responsible for the empirical position in scientific research, as he refused to submit to scientific ideas that he did not put under experiment, even if they were issued by the Church or Aristotle.